Fairdata IDA (ida.fairdata.fi) is a free-of-charge research data storage service offered to Finnish higher education institutions and state research institutes. As part of the Fairdata Services, IDA provides a reliable storage solution for published research dataset data, regardless of the scientific discipline.
In IDA, you can store files that are described using the Fairdata Qvain tool or the Metax API. Once described, the data can be published openly or access can be restricted. Dataset owners decide on the openness and usage policies of their data. Published datasets receive a persistent identifier (DOI) and a landing page in the Etsin service, making them discoverable, citable, and reusable.
The service supports responsible data management:
- Published data remains stored in IDA under certain conditions, regardless of the validity of user credentials. Note that active use of the service is required if the published data contains personal data or if access to the published data is fully restricted in Etsin.
- As a rule, data must be published within two years of being uploaded to IDA. You may request additional preparation time with justification.
- Please ensure that IDA is suitable for the data you intend to store. This responsibility lies with both the user and the data controller.
- IDA can be used either with a user friendly browser UI or command line tools. Read more about the different UIs from the user guide.
- Data is frozen in IDA before it is described as a dataset and openly available via Etsin. Frozen data is stored in IDA in read-only mode, to minimize user errors.
- The integrity of the frozen data is further protected against loss or corruption by replicating each frozen file to a secondary storage medium and calculating an SHA256 checksum for each frozen file.
- Storing data in IDA allows published datasets containing multiple files and folder structures. Data can be made openly accessible in their original folder structure instead of compressing the files and folders into a single zip package. The user can then download the dataset files flexibly via Etsin,
- A single dataset can include hundreds or even thousands of files and have a total volume of up to e.g. several terabytes, enabling users to make large datasets openly accessible with a single persistent identifier.
- Data can also be made openly accessible as a cumulative (growing) dataset, which means that additional files can be incrementally added to the same dataset without changing its persistent identifier.
- A dataset described in Qvain, and containing files stored in IDA, is assigned a DOI or URN, enabling easy reference in publications, and providing a resolvable URL to a dataset landing page in Etsin, via which the data can be downloaded.
- Data stored in IDA can optionally be transferred to the Digital Preservation Service for Research data (use of the Digital Preservation Service requires an agreement).
- Metadata of datasets created with IDA and Qvain can be found from Etsin, and from the research.fi-portal
More information
- Information about becoming an IDA user and a guide for applying for IDA space
- IDA Quick Start Guide and the full IDA User Guide
- IDA FAQ
- Service description
- Terms of Use
- Use policy
- Information on IDA’s maintenance breaks
The video below introduces you to the key features of the Fairdata IDA service. Read the text version of the video.